NatalieJan 2, 2023
Mallory Knodel
Your periodic reminder that domain fronting is the best defence against internet censorship in the most restrictive regimes. If you’re too big to block, the least you can do is leverage the hard won phenomenon of ubiquitous encrypted https traffic to forward requests from dissidents in Iran et al. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/11/1063107/big-tech-iran-protests-domain-fronting/
Big Tech could help Iranian protesters by using an old tool

Until 2018, domain fronting enabled by Google, Amazon, and Microsoft allowed web users to circumvent internet bans and surveillance. Will they reinstate it in Iran?

MIT Technology Review
Dec 30, 2022 at 11:23amWeb
Show threadTobias FiebigDec 30, 2022

@mallory

.oO( hopping in to share some code just sitting around idly... maybe use to some)

https://git.aperture-labs.org/AS59645/rev_prox << For domain fronting... if you are small enough to not be on the radar, it is not overly difficult to setup a reverse proxy yourself and front some selected domains. 🙂

Works also well for signal proxies besides active domains: https://doing-stupid-things.as59645.net/payload/is/just/packet/overhead/2022/09/24/making-it-signal.html

Or shipping packets when you can ship from places where others can't for... reasons: https://doing-stupid-things.as59645.net/payload/is/just/packet/overhead/2022/10/02/making-it-ping-when-it-shouldnt-part-1.html

rev_prox

rev_prox

Gitea: Git with a cup of tea
Show threadSteveJan 2, 2023

@mallory I work in censorship evasion, and we’ve also had success with some protocols that masquerade as video or voice chat calls. Not my project, but the Snowflake allows people to connect to Tor https://snowflake.torproject.org/ IIRC it pretends to be SRTP, and I think is still working.

Domain fronting definitely works too. I’m one of the maintainers of a library called Envoy that helps you add domain fronting (and other techniques) to Android apps: https://github.com/greatfire/envoy

Snowflake

Show threadMallory KnodelJan 3, 2023
@scm more is more when it comes to circumvention techniques. That’s why pluggable transports like snowflake and others you describe are necessary— yes, and!